Graecina sat down. She folded her hands neatly in her lap, but she was breathing too fast. This was a woman who recently lost her husband and who was scalded with hot water yesterday. One of her bare arms was so red raw it must be hurting badly. She had two small children to worry about, as well as her own grief; I could hear the son and daughter playing in the next door room. And now she had to cope with … what?

I sat down too. At that point it was a toss of the coin whether I would end up having to tell her the answer, or she would tell me.

‘At one time, Graecina, I wondered if Aviola and Mucia had been killed by Polycarpus.’ At that, she let out a small squeak of misery. ‘No,’ I reassured her at once. ‘For a freedman to do that to the master who gave him his liberty is patricide – he has killed the man who gave him life, his second life, his life as a free man. And the penalty for patricide in Rome is as cruel as the crime.’

I did not enlighten Graecina, if she did not know. A patricide is sewn into a sack, with a serpent, a cockerel, a monkey and a dog, then the sack is thrown into the sea. Do not ask me the symbolism. That’s Rome, all over.

Whether or not Graecina knew the punishment, I wanted this woman to feel anxious. I needed to pressurise her so she told the truth.

‘Your husband was just protecting someone, wasn’t he?’ I asked her quietly again: ‘Graecina, where is Cosmus?’ Her eyes were wide. I guessed some duty to stay silent had been laid upon her by Polycarpus. ‘It is too late, Graecina. The charade is over. Now you have to tell the truth.’

‘Cosmus ran away. He does that from time to time; he comes home when he is hungry.’

‘He is an unhappy boy.’ As Myla once said to me.

‘He is. He always was, Albia, though he has been much worse lately. I never wanted him here in the first place, as Cosmus must have realised, but my husband took pity on him when the boy was younger.’

‘He came from the Aviola household?’

‘Yes. I had just had my first child and needed help domestically. Cosmus was to be sold and he hated the idea. Polycarpus felt very sorry for his situation, and I think saw something of himself in the lad.’

‘So Polycarpus bought him from Aviola?’

‘Yes. He came to us and was nothing but a nuisance. I do not want him in the house any longer.’ Graecina rushed on, ‘I have asked Galla Simplicia for help with getting rid of him, because I am so afraid he will be difficult about it.’

She stopped, so I repeated it more simply: ‘You are altogether afraid of him.’